I decided to follow my heart and do what I could to learn about what an Obama presidency would mean for this country and started posting on SEATTLEFORBARACKOBAMA.COM in February 2007. HOWIEINSEATTLE.COM will continue to follow progressive Democratic politics in the spirit of Howard Dean's effort to "Take Our Country Back."--"In the face of impossible odds, people who love their country can change it."--Barack Obama

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

"Your problem is with black people in South Carolina"

Let's stop dancing around the fringes of what's going on with the Donnie McClurkin story. He's said some really offensive, really ignorant, really appalling, and totally unacceptable things about LGBT folks.

So, the theory goes, this guy should be publicly repudiated by the Obama campaign.

This, quite frankly, is nuts. If you believe in a big tent.

The cold splash of reality below the fold. If this is the test, that Barack Obama--or any other Democrat who really cares about gay rights--needs to publicly denounce and personally repudiate anyone with Donnie McClurkin's views about homosexuality, then you are essentially calling for a purge of African-American voters in the South from the party.

In other words, if a candidate appears on stage with 100 black South Carolinians, 62 of them share the basic beliefs of McClurkin towards homosexuality. (They may not have his zany ex-gay beliefs, but then most of them probably weren't repeatedly raped by a male relative as a child).

If there are 10,000 people in the audience at a gospel concert, 6,200 hold the same basic beliefs as Donnie McClurkin.

Go ahead. Get up on stage and tell them all to go home. Call them all a bunch of hateful bigots. Compare them to the KKK (they'll really love that one).

Because the Republican party would like nothing more. Nothing.

Now, if you really, really think that we should tell all those people that they're not good enough to be in the Democratic party, support Democratic candidates, and help elect Democrats to office, you ought to state whether you have a plan to make up for all of those voters that you'd export to the Republicans, or whether you'd just prefer permanent minority party status.

If you believe in a big tent, a sometimes uneasy coalition that lurches and crawls but never cruises forward, we're going to have to share the stage with people whose views appall us.

This is not to excuse homophobia. Homophobia sucks. It is awful.

We've had uneasy coalitions before, such as we had during the New Deal, when white Southern racists were part of that coalition. And tremendous progress was made. And now the KKK is a hated fringe group even within the most rightwing of Republicans.

People holding homophobic views need to be educated, not repudiated. Engaged, not shunned.

Love the sinner, hate the sin.

Action talks, and bullshit walks. Either you're for the 50-state strategy, or you're for the 10 state strategy where a comfortable majority aren't homophobic.